Rivals on Legal Tightrope Seek to Expand Freedoms in China

Li Jinsong, a lawyer in Beijing, is a leading member of a group using Chinas laws and courts to push for more political openness and change.Credit
Du Bin for The New York Times

BEIJING — Li Jinsong and Li Jianqiang are Chinese trial lawyers who take on difficult political cases, tangle with the police and seek solace in the same religion, Christianity.

But like many who devote themselves to expanding freedoms and the rule of law in China, the two spend as much time clashing over tactics and principles as they do challenging the ruling Communist Party.

The two Mr. Lis are part of a momentous struggle over the rule of law in China. Young, well educated and idealistic, they and other members of the so-called weiquan, or rights defense, movement, aim to use the laws and courts that the Communist Party has put in place as part of its modernization drive to constrain the party’s power.

The informal network of rights defenders may be the only visible force for political openness and change in China at a time when the surging economy and the country’s rapidly expanding global influence have otherwise strengthened party leaders. The authorities have refrained from suppressing it entirely, at least partly because it operates carefully within the law and uses China’s judicial system, as well as the news media, to advance its aims.

Yet nearly 18 years after the June 4, 1989, crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing, China quickly crushes any organized opposition. Rights defenders face the delicate task of coordinating their actions and expanding their collective influence when they remain autonomous, rudderless and, very often, rivalrous.

The two Mr. Lis have feuded about how to handle big court cases. When they met the Bush administration’s China specialists in the White House last November, they argued about whether top leaders like President Hu Jintao were basically benevolent. A joint interview on Radio Free Asia devolved into a shouting match over whether rights defenders could work with party leaders or should actively oppose them.

As their confrontation grew, Li Jianqiang, the more combative of the two, wrote a manifesto that called China a “super jail” and described its leaders as “ruthless dictators.” He listed Li Jinsong’s name as the lead author and posted it on the Internet.

Li Jinsong, who takes a much softer line, said the essay, which circulated widely, so enraged China’s top leaders that it derailed a major appeals court victory in his highest-profile case, involving China’s “barefoot lawyer,” Chen Guangcheng. The essay may also have given the police in Shandong Province an excuse to send some thugs who assaulted him, he said. Li Jianqiang acknowledged a few weeks later that he wrote the essay himself. But he said it amounted to a minor mistake and dismissed claims that it had a direct impact on the court case.

They and the dozens of other advocates who consider themselves rights defenders have had notable victories, mostly by calling attention to problems at the local level that more senior officials move to fix. They have exposed corruption, illegal land seizures and labor and environmental abuses that have prompted policy changes or at least made many Chinese more aware of the concept of human rights.

As China’s only consistent homegrown critics of government abuses, they have received attention from the international news media and human rights groups. President Bush invited several rights defenders to the White House last spring.

Yet they are, as the nationalist leader Sun Yat-sen lamented about Chinese opposition groups in an earlier era, “grains of sand.” They divide into camps on the fundamental question of whether to try to improve the current Communist Party-run system by supporting well-intentioned party leaders, or to seek an end to Communist rule. “Some of us are waiting for a good emperor, some kind of Gorbachev, to come and fix the system,” Li Jianqiang said. “Many of the rest of us think that is a waste of time. We need to be building a civilization outside the Communist Party.”

Change From Within

That debate is a delicate one for a group whose basic goals — helping people exercise the rights granted to them, at least on paper, by an authoritarian government — at least nominally overlap with those of the party’s leadership.

China’s top leaders, committed to attracting foreign investment and making the country a respected world power, have promised to conform to human rights norms and to run the country “according to law.”

The Communist Party often does not subject itself to the laws it enacts, prompting cynicism about its real intentions. But many rights defenders say they can help bring about meaningful change because the party and government bureaucracy is not monolithic.

Top party leaders, according to this way of thinking, hope to use the legal system and the news media to check abuses of power at the local level, which they view as threats to their own popularity and longevity.

The defining moment came in 2003. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao seized on a case of a migrant worker beaten to death by the police that had been championed by rights defenders. He abolished vagrancy laws that gave the police the authority to round up migrants at will.

Rights defenders concluded that grass-roots organizing and the tactical use of local courts could allow them to circumvent local fiefs in China’s authoritarian bureaucracy and appeal directly to more enlightened leaders at the top.

“China is slowly transforming itself from rule of man to rule of law,” Li Jinsong said. “I believe that this process has the support of the top leaders. They face resistance within the system, and they need outside help.”

But this view, once widespread, has fallen out of favor among other rights defenders. Li Jianqiang calls it a “peasant mentality” because farmers since feudal times have looked to the emperor, presumed to be benevolent, to solve problems they say are caused by venal local officials.

He contends that President Hu, who once talked as though he wanted to expand constitutional rights and strengthen the legal system, has more recently done the reverse.

In internal party speeches, Mr. Hu has called on officials to guard against “color revolutions” of the kind that swept Central Asia and Central Europe, which officials here attributed to a potent combination of civic and social organizations and foreign forces. Mr. Hu has clamped down on lawyers and journalists and tightened the party’s control over the courts.

Photo

Li Jianqiang is also deeply involved in the so-called weiquan, or rights defense, movement in China. He lives in Qingdao, in eastern China, but he travels around the country to represent clients who are involved in conflicts with the government.Credit
Du Bin for The New York Times

Gao Zhisheng, one of the most outspoken rights defenders, was arrested and convicted of subversion last year, though he was given a suspended sentence because the authorities said he provided information about other dissidents. Another rights defender, Guo Feixiong, was arrested and faces charges of illegal business activity. A third, Guo Guoting, fearing police intimidation or possible prosecution, fled to Canada.

“The strategy of submitting petitions and using legal actions to draw the emperor’s attention is a proven failure,” Li Jianqiang said. “It ends up encouraging rule by man, not rule of law.”

Same Name, Two Paths

Li Jinsong and Li Jianqiang became lawyers in 1994. Both are Christians. The similarities do not run much deeper.

Li Jianqiang, 42, lives in the east coast city of Qingdao. He eagerly discusses politics and the law. He relates his run-ins with China’s police or State Security officials like war stories. He has an impish smile.

As an employee of the Qingdao city government, he joined public protests in favor of democracy in 1989. When the military shot student protesters in Beijing on June 4, 1989, local governments moved to weed out people who had supported the students. Mr. Li lost his job.

He returned to school to study law, but never shed his reputation as a troublemaker. He took on cases involving accusations of police or government malfeasance, but he said he was often harassed by local authorities. Increasingly, he found it difficult to represent clients in his home province, Shandong.

So he became itinerant. He defended a journalist accused of leaking state secrets in Hunan Province and a writer accused of posting subversive materials on the Internet in Hubei Province. Recently, he sued local authorities in Zhejiang Province after they demolished a Christian church that the government had not sanctioned.

He met other young lawyers who called themselves rights defenders. He became a Christian in 2005, he said, when some of them introduced him to the religion. He worships in an unofficial “family” church in Qingdao.

“I decided we have a spiritual vacuum in our society that only God can replace,” he said.

Li Jinsong, 41, practices law in Beijing. He often wears dark business suits over dark shirts. That, along with a courteous and deferential manner, gives him the air of a priest. But he frowns and speaks in clipped phrases when asked to discuss his personal background, including his religion. He said he began attending a government-authorized Protestant church in 1988.

“It’s not something I deny, but not something I like to talk about publicly,” he said softly.

Though he practices commercial law, he has also defended “vulnerable people,” as he calls them. He helped migrant workers force a transportation company to stop raising ticket prices before a major holiday, when migrants scramble to return to their hometowns in the countryside. A Beijing court compelled the Finance Ministry to revise an administrative ruling against one of his clients in 2001, a milestone case that some saw as confirming a right to sue government entities.

But it was a case in Li Jianqiang’s home province, Shandong, that made Li Jinsong well known in legal circles. He became the lead lawyer for Chen Guangcheng, a self-trained legal expert who, despite being blind since a childhood illness, championed peasants in legal actions against local authorities.

In 2005, Mr. Chen sought to organize a class-action lawsuit on behalf of hundreds of peasants forced to have abortions or undergo sterilization procedures after local officials in Linyi City, Shandong, failed to meet their official population-control quotas. The police put him under house arrest, and prosecutors later indicted him on charges of destroying property and disrupting traffic. Relatives and supporters say the charges were concocted to punish him.

Li Jinsong and other rights defenders used a publicity campaign to increase the pressure on local officials to treat Mr. Chen fairly, while alerting top leaders in Beijing to what they and many others said was an embarrassing abuse of authority at the local level.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Li Jianqiang, though not personally involved, criticized the strategy at the time. He wrote in an open letter that Li Jinsong had made “stupid mistakes” that backed the local authorities into a corner and did little to help Mr. Chen.

Both men, it appeared, had reasons to think they were right. Mr. Chen’s prosecution and trial, in a county court, made a mockery of China’s official judicial procedures. Local thugs prevented Li Jinsong from entering Mr. Chen’s village to interview witnesses. They flipped over his car when he visited. The day before the trial, the local police detained a fellow lawyer on a pretense. The verdict: guilty, and a harsh prison sentence of four years and three months for Mr. Chen.

Li Jinsong’s luck changed sharply on appeal. Last October, a higher court in the city of Linyi overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial. Mr. Li and other rights defenders hailed it as a major victory. They saw the hand of more senior officials at work.

“There are some leaders who I believe are conscious of what was happening and wanted to see a fair result,” he said. “We saw their intervention in this case.”

A Visit to America

China’s rights defenders have developed a reputation for being a force for legal, evolutionary change. In the United States, foundations and religious groups that support grass-roots activities here have backed them.

One pioneer in that effort is the China Aid Association, a religious group based in Midland, Tex., that has ties to the Bush administration. The association monitors conditions for Christians and supports rights defenders, many of whom are Christian.

Last November, the China Aid Association invited the two Mr. Lis and two other rights defenders to visit Midland and Washington. The two did not know each other well. Li Jianqiang’s criticism of the handling of the Chen case did not endear them to each other. But Li Jinsong said he looked forward to the trip.

“I thought we might come to understand each other better if we met outside China,” he said.

Instead, their debate intensified. After prayer sessions in Midland, in the offices of members of Congress and at foundations where they meet potential donors, the two Mr. Lis offered conflicting versions of what should be done to advance the rule of law in China. They disagreed on whether the United States should encourage political change or support top leaders who wanted to carry out such changes.

Li Jinsong, still elated about the appeals court victory in Mr. Chen’s case the month before, often cited the case to support his view that the top leaders had good intentions.

Though the two lawyers smiled and stood side by side for photographs in front of the White House and State Department, they said they argued with each other when they met the Bush administration’s China experts inside. When they appeared together for a broadcast on Radio Free Asia, their differences burst into the open.

Li Jinsong said during the broadcast that he had urged donors and Bush administration officials to steer aid to Communist Party officials “who do good,” as well as to rights defenders hoping to improve things from the outside.

He said he wanted “to express my appreciation” for President Hu, Prime Minister Wen and Vice President Zeng Qinghong.

“These three leaders do not want to see abuses and would not tolerate them if they knew about them,” he said.

Li Jianqiang said he and Li Jinsong had a “basic disagreement.” Top leaders, he said, have more responsibility, not less, for human rights abuses.

He said that during the 1990s, when President Jiang Zemin was in power, there were relatively few arrests of dissident writers. Today, with Mr. Hu in charge, there are many more, he said.

“There are a larger than usual number of unjust arrests,” Li Jinsong acknowledged. “But I am sure that if the top leaders knew about them, the people would be set free.”

“That is nonsense,” Li Jianqiang responded. “The leaders play deaf and dumb and pretend they have a real legal system.”

A Prayer for China

After their meetings in Washington, Li Jinsong got the news that Chen Guangcheng’s second trial, as ordered by the appeals court, would convene in a few days. He had to cut his trip short and catch the first flight home.

Just after he departed, Li Jianqiang, who stayed on in the United States, wrote an essay he titled “A Prayer for China.” It said, in part, “In this free, God-blessed land, where we received a friendly reception by the American government, we must not forget our pitiable homeland.”

He said China would not have a better future without “systemic change” in politics and culture. “Our government clasps chains on the people and enslaves them. In our one-party dictatorship, the law is little more than an ornament, and the rights in the Constitution are laughable lies.”

On Nov. 27, the same day Mr. Chen’s second trial took place in Shandong, Li Jianqiang posted the letter on a popular overseas Web site. The names of the four rights defenders on the trip were listed at the bottom. Li Jinsong’s came first.

Under pressure a month later, Li Jianqiang wrote a second letter, which he also posted online, saying he made a mistake listing Li Jinsong’s name. Li Jinsong said the damage was done.

Mr. Chen’s second trial was only slightly less of a mockery than the first, in the eyes of Mr. Chen’s supporters. A crucial witness, who Mr. Li said was prepared to testify to providing false evidence against Mr. Chen after the police tortured him, was arrested on the eve of the trial. Three days later, the court issued the same verdict it had in the first trial, sentencing Mr. Chen to four years and three months in prison.

Li Jinsong and several other supporters of Mr. Chen say Li Jianqiang’s essay may have hurt Mr. Chen’s chances of a favorable verdict. Officials in Shandong used the essay to claim that Mr. Chen’s supporters had been infiltrated by foreign forces seeking to undermine the Communist Party, they said.

A senior law professor and government adviser in Beijing, who is not connected to the Chen case, said he attended a meeting shortly after Mr. Chen’s second trial in which top judicial officials, including Luo Gan, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee who oversees the judicial system, discussed the case. It was cited as an example of how “hostile forces” had used the courts to provoke social unrest, said the law professor, who asked not to be identified because the meeting was secret.

“We had hoped the second trial would be a fair trial,” Li Jinsong said. “But the essay undercut those who wanted such a result.”

Li Jianqiang acknowledges that the essay was his attempt to signal a common stance among rights defenders where none existed. But he said it could not have had the impact Li Jinsong claimed. Having been posted online the same day the trial took place, it could hardly have influenced the trial itself, he said. And he said he considered it unlikely that it prompted central government leaders to dictate a different verdict.

“In our system, the decision to convict is made before the trial, not after,” he said.

Instrumental or not, the letter shows how the rights defense movement is struggling to maintain a sense of purpose amid an intensifying police crackdown and a string of public defeats.

In late December, Li Jinsong traveled to Shandong to prepare another appeal. He never reached his destination.

After entering the province, his overnight bus from Beijing was stopped on a public highway and boarded by thugs. They singled out Mr. Li and a colleague, dragged them from the bus and rained blows on their heads and bodies. They left them bloodied on the sidewalk and sped off.

Li Jinsong was treated for minor injuries. He said the local police ignored his attempt to file a complaint.

Mr. Li debated with friends whether he should try to return to Shandong to attend the appeal hearing. In the end, he did not have to decide. The judges met privately, with no lawyers present. This time, they backed the local court, sending Mr. Chen to prison.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Rivals on Legal Tightrope Seek To Expand Freedoms in China. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe